By DCB Editorial, July 3, 2025
Evening all, Jeramy Clarkson here.
Brace yourselves—Lotus is apparently in crisis. Or not. Or maybe. Who knows anymore? Depends which part of the British motoring press you trust… which is to say, none of it. Autocar broke the dramatic news: Lotus is closing its UK factory! The Emira is dead!
Their source? An “impeccable insider.” Translation: someone in a pub, two pints deep, who once walked past a Lotus dealership and now fancies themselves as Deep Throat.
But over here at The Daily Car Blog, we fired up our BS detectors—and guess what? It pinged louder than a McLaren P1 in reverse. That “impeccable source” smelled suspiciously like bait. The kind you dangle in front of desperate journos hunting for clicks and a whiff of relevance.
What was really happening? Easy: Lotus was floating a fabricated crisis through a respected outlet to drum up sympathy and, more importantly, the attention of the sitting government. Bravo, honestly. That’s PR judo.
But wait—Autocar has caught on. And they’re not happy. In fact, they’ve responded like a toddler told Peppa Pig isn’t real.
Cue an op-ed from Rachel Burgess, now throwing the toys and the pram out of the cot. She squarely blames Geely—the Chinese parent company—for Lotus’s “troubles,” while conveniently ignoring the fact that pre-Geely Lotus was on financial life support since VHS was cutting-edge tech.
Her article is so sanctimonious, it practically needs a halo. It kicks off with a not-so-subtle borderline racist swipe at Geely for not grasping “Western values” and “market expectations.” Ah yes, the good old colonial chestnut: if the Chinese don’t run things our way, clearly they’re doing it wrong.
Honestly, what the fuck is she talking about?
Geely is the bad guy for “not understanding the Lotus brand.” Right. Because British management has done such a stellar job with car companies over the years—just ask Rover. Or MG. Or Lotus itself, pre-Geely.
Funny how Autocar never had much to say when Tata quietly dismantled Jaguar piece by piece. But oh, a Chinese company makes a move, and suddenly we’re defending the Empire.
If a turkey had a keyboard and a grudge, the Burgess article is what it would produce—gobble-gobble nonsense dressed up as gobble-gobble journalism. It’s part obituary, part hissy fit, no actual insight—just snarky ethno-supremacist patriotism wrapped in journalistic cosplay.
But hey, that’s British motoring journalism in 2025: fueled by nostalgia, driven by ego, and absolutely tanking in relevance. These are the same people who still think Vauxhall is edgy and that car shows peaked with Top Gear in 2006.
Make no mistake: the elite motoring press didn’t just lose the plot—they shredded the script, ate the paper, and called it an exclusive.
So yes, Lotus might be playing games. But at least they know how to play. Meanwhile, Autocar got played like a kazoo at a kids’ party—and they’re squeaking mad about it.
Shitty journalism is our thing here at The Daily Car Blog—we’ve perfected it. But Autocar? We expected better.
RIP, British motoring journalism. You didn’t go out with a bang. You went out writing angry op-eds and defending Land Rover.
Evening all!